I haven’t played the original Payday, so I asked the current guests at RPS manor to provide an opinion for me. “It was good, but cruelly tough,” claimed Craig Pearson, Scottishly. “It really is Left 4 Dead,” he added, Welshly.
Said Adam: “” Said John: “” Said Cara: “”
Therefore my opinion of Payday is that it was good, but cruelly tough. It really was Left 4 Dead. And there’s to be a sequel later this year, with the now Starbreeze-owned Overkill once again on dev duties.(more…)
Attention PAYDAY crew! Wolfpack, the first PSN downloadable content for PAYDAY: The Heist, is coming to North America next Tuesday, August 7th.
We’ve been busy casing some new jobs for you, with Wolfpack featuring two never-before-seen epic heists – Undercover and Counterfeit. The Undercover heist forces players to drive away the pesky police interrupting a back alley deal, while the Counterfeit heist pressures players to use silenced weapons to keep whistle-blowing civilians from escaping an underground money printing gig. If they tell the 5-0, they’ll blow the whole operation!
We’re also arming you with new weapons and crewmembers to ensure the job goes smoothly. These new heists require advanced skills, but award bigger payouts. Key features of the Wolfpack DLC include:
New Weapons: Spray some lead on the move with the all-new auto handgun and assault rifle, or blow away tenacious foes with the shiny new grenade launcher. Need someone to watch your back? Release the deployable sentry gun to take out your enemies. The Technician: Based on the character Wolf, the technician is a man who knows how to get things done. With a new skill set and equipment, the technician is a techno-sociopath using the sentry-gun and tool kit. One Pays, All Play: Got friends in high places? If you are tight on cash until the next score, all you need is a friend with the content. The new heists can only be hosted if you own the DLC, but anyone with the base game can join for free. Just When You Think You’re Out: With all-new Trophies and a raised level cap, there will be a lot more for you to brag about.The Wolfpack DLC pack will be available in the US for $9.99. Check out the PAYDAY The Heist website for more info.
Thanks again for your support; looking forward to the in-game action!
PAYDAY: The Heist - Mercy Hospital out now!
OVERKILL brings you Mercy Hospital - OVERKILL's fan fiction for Left 4 Dead!
The Mercy Hospital Heist is finally here! We have collaborated with Valve to bring our beloved PAYDAY fans a completely new heist, free of charge! Set in the Mercy Hospital - made famous by Left 4 Dead - everyone's favorite robbers are out for blood. We also have some extra candy hidden in there for those who just can't help ending up in the hospital.
If the regular difficulty levels won't do it for you, don't forget that you can play the Mercy Hospital Heist in the new OVERKILL +145 difficulty. We promise you that this one will leave you gasping for air...
But wait, the infection seems to be spreading: not only do our beloved players get a new heist for free, they also get new zombie masks AND a new zombie theme! Oh, the horror! New related challenges and Steam achievements will be released in an upcoming patch.
Here is the complete change log for the Mercy Hospital Heist release:
Until then - Stay alive! If you can...
I think it’s more of a polite corporate takeover (IF SUCH A THING EXISTS) than a masked, gun-toting robbery, but the fact remains that Syndicate Riddick developer Starbreeze is awaiting shareholder approval as it bids to buy Overkill Software, they of PayDay: The Heist. If it all goes ahead, Overkill shall continue enhancements of the first game while also working on a sequel, which must feature supernatural elements and go by the name HeistGeist. Starbreeze have plenty in development already, with three internal teams working on three separate games, including “free-to-playish” Cold Mercury, the self-funded P13 and one other mystery title.
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Ooh, I’m in PSA mode: bank-robbing FPS PayDay:The Heist is free on Steam this weekend, and 50% off if you choose to buy it. Dan Gril loved it, and I concur that it’s an excellent mash-up of gaming and film influences: everything from the opening sequence of The Dark Knight to Heat is mined and tossed into a Left 4 Deadish co-op run and gun. It’s kind of the perfect weekend game, if your idea of the perfect weekend is shooting policemen and being able to get to sleep at night afterwards. And if you’re not planning to play this, why not tell us what you are up to that’s so important that you can afford to ignore a free game? It better be damn good.(more…)
The heist genre seems to have been arrested before it even got going: Subversion is serving a ten-year stretch as the new Prison Tycoon; Monaco’s team is keeping its head down and hoping for an early release. Only Payday: The Heist is at large, having stolen the nascent heist genre blueprints from under their noses. Here’s Wot I Think.(more…)
3 out of 5
Payday: The Heist is probably the closest we'll ever get to Heat: The Game, and that's a bit depressing. To be more accurate, Payday is basically The Best Part of Heat: Done as a Game With Middling Results. Payday is about heists, often heists very similar to those seen in Michael Mann's Los Angeles crime classic. Four players get together, take down a bank, or a jewelry exchange, or a cash-flush meth lab, fending off waves of cops and rival criminals while achieving specific, randomly-generated objectives. It's a neat idea that could be amazing were it more rich in atmosphere, storytelling, and excitement. Sadly, Overkill Software's game is lacking in all of these things. There are moments of multiplayer thrill to be had here, but they're infrequent, and sometimes tough to get to.
Based solely on the concept, Payday: The Heist should be the best game ever made...First and foremost, understand this about Payday: The Heist: this is a multiplayer game. Offline play exists, albeit in a form similar to Left 4 Dead's own single-player mode. It's there if you want it, but there's no conceivable reason why you'd want it. The accompanying A.I. is radically inferior to just about anyone you could possibly scrape together for an online match, and the total disconnection of the action from anything resembling a story means that there's no real progression here. There are six heist missions. You do them entirely independently of one another. The only constant is the characters, who are less characters, and more differently-accented voice actors who are solely there for player differentiation purposes.
With this in mind, also understand that it is not the easiest process in the world to get into a game of Payday: The Heist. A couple of days after its launch, only a handful of players seem to be online at any given time, and I found myself running into a variety of strange "this lobby has already been filled" errors, even for lobbies that only appeared to have a single player in them. Getting into a game proved far more of a chore than it arguably had any right to be, considering the meager number of players seemingly hitting the servers.
But let's presume that you do manage to navigate potential errors and a dearth of players, and find your way into an actual game of Payday, and let's also presume that the players you're in a game with are competent, collected individuals who know how to follow instructions and patiently follow the progression of a map. If all these various things prove to be true, you will have some fun with Payday: The Heist.
The missions are varied in style and objectives; some involve straight money-heisting, while others involve revenge plots, and even a prison break that plays like a weird reference to the opening scene of Grand Theft Auto III. All of this stuff seems referential in one way or another, though most of those references are directed toward the aforementioned Heat. From the bank job that uses a musical score almost identical to the one in Heat's iconic bank heist, to a mission literally called "Heat Street" where you run around shooting up cop cars, it seems that Overkill's crosshairs were aimed squarely at Mann's movie when developing this game. There's even a hacky reference to Tom Sizemore's "For me, the action is the juice" line shoved into one of the loading menus.
I wish I could say that any of Payday's content was anywhere near as compelling as Mann's film, but frankly, it's not even as compelling as most modern shooters. Overkill has liberally cribbed from Valve's Left 4 Dead methodology, building missions around a lengthy series of objectives--kill the alarms, set up saws and drills to break into various things, find a guy who has a key for something, and so on--that sometimes employ randomized locations to keep things fresh. There are even horde-like waves of SWAT cops and FBI agents that periodically show up to try and derail your mission in aggressive fashion. Again, pointing to that ideal scenario where everyone knows exactly what they're doing, these missions can be quite fun. Heists are lengthy and full of fast-paced combat and strategy that keeps you on your toes. If you and your cohorts can communicate, there's a good bit to like here.
...Unfortunately, the final product doesn't quite make good on all that potential.If you can't, you're boned. All it really takes is one or two associates with a Waingro mentality to completely screw up a mission. You have to know what objectives each of you are taking on, and when to stick together. A heist can still be successful so long as one of you survives, but the waves of cops that Payday tosses at you are so hefty that it's damn difficult for anyone to survive if even one person decides to freelance. A tight challenge is a good thing, but the action itself is not necessarily thrilling enough to want you to keep coming back time and time again to try these missions should you end up with some regularly lousy players.
Part of that comes from the weirdly antiquated feel of Payday. It looks okay, but often feels like a game out of time, like something that should have popped out around the early 2000s, back when a game could sort of ride on controversy over gameplay. The shooting is fine, but there's something Counter-Strike-mod-feeling about the action that makes it feel kind of...fake. Like one of those fake video games some writer on Law & Order would have conceived for an episode in which real bank robbers used the game as a road map for a real robbery, and Jack McCoy is up in arms and wants to charge the developers as an accessory or something. Except Payday is real, and feels a few years past when it might have actually made some kind of impact.
Ultimately devoid of impact as it is, Payday is a game that does manage to offer a few hours of entertainment. Its spartan slate of features and atmospherically lackluster missions fail to give it the kind of addictive quality so important to a game like Left 4 Dead's lasting appeal, but for those who just feel like mowing down some cops, heisting some loot, and reminiscing about how damned good a movie Heat is, Payday is serviceable enough across the board.
Attention PAYDAY crew! The time has come – PAYDAY: The Heist officially launches today on the PlayStation Network, developed by OVERKILL Software and published by Sony Online Entertainment (SOE). Grab your masks, don’t forget the ammo and most importantly make sure you bring along your friends!
Dive full force into six heists of co-op madness, fighting off cops, stealing large sums of money and embarking on the ultimate high-intensity, first-person shooter adventure. To kick-off launch, take a look at the never before seen Heat Street Heist trailer (which might look familiar to some of you movie buffs):
In case you missed them previously, here’s the entire series of heist trailers…
Check out the PAYDAY: The Heist website for more info. Thanks again for your patience and support. I’m looking forward to the in-game action!
We’re at it again, PAYDAY crew! The criminal masterminds behind the highly anticipated PSN co-op shooter PAYDAY: The Heist, are coming for your PS3s next Tuesday, October 18th!
SOE and the OVERKILL team have worked diligently to develop and create a game with the highest quality of content – which will give players continued replayabilty and hours of complex, death-defying heists in a never-ending pursuit of the next big score. We can’t wait for the launch of this highly anticipated game and are even more excited for players and fans to finally enjoy PAYDAY The Heist together online. Once again, SOE would like to thank the loyal community for your patience and assure you that this will be worth the wait!
In the meantime, feel free to check out the all-new Slaughterhouse trailer above that highlights one of the most difficult heists featured in the game. Check out the PAYDAY: The Heist website for more info.
Thanks again for your continued support! Gear up to seize the game on October 18th.
Word on the street is that to pull off the biggest score, a heist must be planned and outlined to the very last detail with perfect team members, unbeatable weapons and unrecognizable disguises. That being said, SOE & OVERKILL Software need a little more time to assemble the ideal squad and attack strategy for our highly anticipated adrenaline-pumping first person shooter, PAYDAY: The Heist.
With this in mind, SOE and the talented OVERKILL team have decided to push PAYDAY’s official launch day to later in October, ensuring the overall game quality and potential score for all heist team members.
Not a PAYDAY crew member yet and hoping to get in on the loot? SOE has extended PRE-ORDERS – which have been excellent to date – to gather an even larger body of potential crew to co-operate with at launch!
For our established crew members, PAYDAY will still be awarded to those who purchased all four PSN titles in our inaugural PlayStation Network PLAY event, according to the terms of that program.
Your continued loyalty and patience with the game’s further development is very much appreciated, we truly believe your first heist will be worth the wait. SOE recognizes the demand for quality from PlayStation® players and looks to meet this head on with the upcoming launch of PAYDAY: The Heist.
To feed your inner convict until the big day, check out the official PAYDAY: The Heist site for more info: http://www.PAYDAY-TheHeist.com/
We’ll meet you all at our set location via the PlayStation Network later this month! Stay tuned for updates!
We forced Dan Gril to wear a clown mask, break into Sony’s HQ, and hold everyone up until they gave us information on Overkill Software’s heist-them-up, Payday. Read on to find out all about the life of crime that awaits.
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Sony Online Entertainment’s PSN publishing division is really on fire. As announced yesterday, Rochard, Sideway: New York, and PAYDAY: The Heist are all coming to the PlayStation Network on consecutive weeks this fall. Earlier today, I had the pleasure of a walkthrough of PAYDAY: The Heist with developer Overkill Software.
Here, creative director Simon Viklund explains PAYDAY’s level-up system and customization, and the importance of co-operation in a heist.
Of note: these missions are pretty lengthy. My World Bank playthrough took 28 minutes to complete, though it was with first-timers. Viklund estimates between 15 and 30 minutes of gameplay per playthrough of each of PAYDAY’s six missions.
PAYDAY: The Heist will be available for download on PSN this October 4th for $19.99. That price drops to ZERO if you purchase the rest of the PSN Play lineup. Click here for more info.